Opening hours
The simulator part of the game, '''also known as the restaurant's '''opening hours '''or a '''day, is the main part of the game and where most of the action happens. It features a view of the player's restaurant, where customers come from the left side of the screen and leave through the right side. A customer will generate an order for food; the customer will stay on screen while the order is being made or until he/she gets tired, then the customer will leave. During a safety inspection day, an inspector will come several times during the day to make sure the player completes chores efficiently. The safety inspector will come from and stay on the left side of the screen and leave through the same side. The flow of customers is determined by buzz . A clock on the upper right corner shows the time. The restaurant opens at 9 AM and closes at 10 PM. Prep stations On the left side of the screen there are also the prep stations, identified by numbers. Those are the slots where the orders and chores will appear. In order to interact with whatever it's in any prep station, the player has to press the appropiate prep station number on the keyboard, click on it with the mouse or tap on it in touch devices. The number of prep stations effectively limits the number of customers that can be served. If all prep stations are busy, there won't be any more orders until one is free. Also, there is not a hidden queue of customers, who will wait for a free prep station (unless the customer is a Cook4Luv date). The player starts with 4 prep stations but, fortunately, the number of prep stations increase as the player progresses through the game. Orders Each customer will generate one order for food and after being served or getting tired of waiting, leave. The order will appear on a prep station as a thin rectangle showing what the order is about. Note that the image shown does not indicate the exact recipe, but the general food the order will be about. Once the player presses the corresponding prep station key, the order will appear on the bottom side of the screen indicating how to prepare it. The player then has to follow the instructions in order to prepare the recipe. Some foods need some ingredients to be cooked before any further preparation (for instance, meat patties on a burger ) while other ones are required to place all the ingredients and then be cooked, or they don't need to be cooked at all (like salads, drinks, sushi...). Finally, the baked potato is the only food that requires to be cooked before preparing it, so pressing the appropiate prep station key will cook it instead of opening the menu for selecting ingredients/techniques. In order to follow the recipe and place the ingredients, the player is required to press the corresponding keys (again, or click on them with the mouse, or tap on them on touch devices) for the ingredients or the preparation techniques. These keys are usually very intuitive: in order to do some french fries, the player needs to press and hold the down arrow key to dunk the fries basket in the frying pan, then release it when some smoke comes out indicating they are done, press the P key to Place them in a bowl and, if the recipe calls for it, press S to add salt. However, all keys can be customized in the key bindings menu. It is important to note that ingredients may seem to take a little bit of time (maybe centiseconds) to be placed or poured, but they do not. Everything is added immediately. If a soup recipe calls for bouillon cubes and chicken, as soon as the player presses the corresponding chicken and bouillon cubes, the cook button can be pressed and the order will be perfect. This is particularly useful when serving coffee, as sugar may appear to take long to add but if the recipe calls for two sugar cubes, pressing the sugar key twice and serving immediately will grant a perfect order, even if the sugar cubes never reached the cup in the screen. Another important detail about adding ingredients is the fact that most ingredients can be added simultaneously. If a pasta recipe calls for red sauce ®, onions (O), red peppers (P), mushroom (U) and spinach (S), the player can press R-O-P-U-S at the same time and everything will be added. One must be careful, though, as some keyboards suffer from key jamming. There are two ways of serving the food depending on the need of further cooking or not. If the food doesn't need more cooking, the player must press Enter to serve the food. If further cooking is needed, the player needs to press Enter to cook, and then press the corresponding prep station key when the food is done. Order length When a customer places an order, if it's not taken care of, that order will start fading to the left, making a distinctive sound and showing some arrows on the left side. The amount of time it takes for an order to start disappearing is affected by various factors such as the restaurant equipment, special events or emails and some others. If the order disappears completely from the prep station, it will be considered a bad order. Have in mind that there is a grace period of merely a second from the moment the order disappears until the bad order is awarded, so the player has time to press the appropiate key to prevent it. Once a prep station key has been pressed, the customer who made the order will not leave. Orders that are being cooked, a small clock will appear on the right side indicating how much time the order needs to cook for. After that cooking time, a vertical bar that indicates the amount of time before the food burns witll show up. This burning bar starts at green level, then fills up going through yellow, orange and red levels, and finally the bar will disappear and the food will burn. Order status An order's border color when on the prep station will indicate the status of that order. When customers make an order, it will have no border. An order that needs further preparation will show a bright and blinking cyan border, while an order ready to deliver will show a bright and blinking yellow border. Order rating Once the order is served, it will be rated according to how was the order processed. If the recipe was accurately followed in terms of ingredients and cooking times, it will be considered a perfect order. If there is any deviation from that, it may be considered an average order or even a bad one. *Perfect order: An order that followed the recipe with precision, perfectly cooked if it needed to be cooked. When serving a perfect order, yellow smileys will be shown. *Average order: An order that followed the recipe to some extent, maybe missing some ingredients or adding some unwanted ones, or that wasn't cooked enough (some foods only). Generally one or two mistakes in an order will yield an average order.When serving an average order, turquoise straight faces will be shown. *Bad order: An order that missed the recipe by making more than two mistakes, that wasn't cooked enough or that was burnt, or an order for a food with the Perfection detractor that wasn't perfect. Also a missed order will be considered a bad order. When serving a bad order, red faces will be shown. Rush hours Everyday there are two rush hours where customers will come at an increased rate. The morning rush occurs from 12 PM to 1 PM and the evening rush from 6 PM to 7 PM. Vertigo Gaming has not revealed what the rush hour formula for customer flow is, but sometimes if the buzz is very high (120-130%), there will be less customers coming during a rush hour than during the rest of the day. During rush hours, food that has the Munchies detractor won't be ordered unless on Extreme Difficulty. Also there won't be any robberies, Cook4Luv date visits. However, there might be safety inspections, texting and VIP visits. Category:Gameplay